When Accreditation Standards Change: Factors Affecting Differential Responsiveness of Public and Private Organizations

The enigma of quality in Greek higher education

“…Neo-institutional theory argues that organizations attempt to incorporate norms from their institutional environments; hence, they can gain legitimacy, resources, stability, and enhanced survival prospects (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983;Meyer & Rowan, 1977;Oliver, 1997;Scott, 1987). This perspective has become an important approach for explaining how organizations use rationalized formal structures and corresponding policies to adapt to institutionalized prescriptions drawing from their environments and has been applied to different organizational phenomena (Casile & Davis-Blake, 2002;Csizmadia, 2006;Erden, 2006;Gornitzka, 1999;Kraatz & Moore, 2002;Leblebici et al, 1991;Lounsbury, 2001;Sherer & Lee, 2002;Sporn, 1999). Neo-institutional theory has also developed concepts to understand how environmental pressures may increase organizational homogeneity in a certain field (isomorphism) while organizations may nevertheless respond to such pressures in a rather ritualistic, symbolic way.…”

“…A study by Casile and Davis-Blake (2002) examined how technical and institutional factors affected the responsiveness of public and private universities to a change in accreditation standards. The authors found that a market niche and ties to an accrediting organization affected the responsiveness of both types of organizations; however, they argued that potential economic gains from accreditation (technical factors) had a greater effect on the responsiveness of private universities.…”

Tying down global to lobal: identifying the influential factors affecting the progress and outcomes of accreditation processes in Dutch-Caribbean universities

“…Westerheijden further characterizes accreditation as "… an evaluation based on agreed standards, resulting in a formal, public recognition of an institution or a programme" 14 . In other literature accreditation is considered as strongly connected with compliance to pre-defined standards as it is seen to be an objective instrument to measure quality (Bogue, 1998;Casile and Davis-Blake, 2002;Parri, 2006;Harvey, 2004;Kristensen, 2010;Martin and Stella, 2007;Watson and Madison, 2005).…”

“…The focus of accreditation can be on input, process or output or any combination of these (Casile and Davis-Blake, 2002;Harvey, 2004;Martin and Stella, 2007;Watson and Madison, 2005). To become accredited higher education institutions or their programs are expected to meet the standards set for the input, process and/or output factors.…”

The structuration of managing for results : a practice perspective on middle managers in the Dutch central government

“…For instance, by exploiting existing cues and repertoires, entrepreneurs can enhance the likelihood of successful adoption. Also, according to Dacin, Goodstein, and Scott (2002), special emphasis needs to be given to the legitimation of change, for instance by conformity to field-level cognitive interpretations (Glynn & Abzug 2002), through market feedback (Lee & Pennings 2002), or through the development of constitutive rules that provide guidelines for change (Greenwood et al 2002) as well as links to these institutional entrepreneurs (Casile & Davis-Blake 2002). Another factor to consider is that the higher individuals in the organizational hierarchy are, the more likely they are to conduct divergent organizational change (Battilana 2006;Hambrick & Mason 1984;Kraatz & Moore 2002;Tushman & Romanelli 1985).…”